Book Details

About This Book

Model and implement different business processes using the BPMN2 standard notation

Understand how and when to use the different tools provided by the JBoss Business Process Management (BPM) platform

Learn how to model complex business scenarios and environments through a step-by-step approach

Who This Book Is For

If you are a Java developer or architect who needs to have a better understanding of how Business Process Management frameworks behave in real-life implementations, this book is for you.

This book assumes that you know the Java language well and are familiar with some widely used frameworks such as Hibernate. You should also know the basics of relational databases and Maven-based applications.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Why Do We Need Business Process Management?

Theoretical background

Introduction, analysis, and explanations of standard specifications

Technical details and common practices of jBPM6

The conceptual background of BPM

The BPM discipline

BPM applications in the real world

Summary

Chapter 2: BPM Systems' Structure

Components of a BPMS

Node instance structures

External interactions

Predictive analytics and decision management

Summary

Chapter 3: Using BPMN 2.0 to Model Business Scenarios

Introduction to BPMN 2.0

Modeling business scenarios with BPMN 2.0

Technical perspective

Summary

Chapter 4: Understanding the KIE Workbench

What you need to start a jBPM6 environment

Summary

Chapter 5: Creating a Process Project in the KIE Workbench

An IDE to our knowledge

Implementing our first process

Sprint management process design

The Web Process Designer advanced topics

Providing a runtime for our process

Summary

Chapter 6: Human Interactions

Understanding human interactions

jBPM6 Human task component's overview

Summary

Chapter 7: Defining Your Environment with the Runtime Manager

Understanding the role of the runtime manager

The different implementations available

The UI configuration of runtime managers

Creating your own runtime manager

Summary

Chapter 8: Implementing Persistence and Transactions

Why do we need persistence and transactions?

Persistence in jBPM6

Other persistence mechanisms

Summary

Chapter 9: Integration with Other Knowledge Definitions

What is a rule?

Old-fashioned integration

The Drools rule engine

Temporal reasoning and processes

Summary

Chapter 10: Integrating KIE Workbench with External Systems

Defining your architecture

Extending the KIE Workbench architecture

Remote engine invocations

Deploying the KIE Workbench in the cloud

Summary

What You Will Learn

Leverage the power of business rules to simplify business processes

Use jBPM6's configuration and architecture for different environments and scenarios

Define your environment in a user-friendly, extensible, and configurable way with the tooling provided in jBPM6

Understand how the framework handles information that flows through your business processes

Integrate practical examples of automating with different enterprise technologies in Java and non-Java environments

Demonstrate the benefits of running the inference power of the Drools engine together with process executions

Discover how to use the KIE Workbench extension points to communicate with external systems

In Detail

jBPM6 Developer Guide will guide you through each level of the jBPM6 platform, allowing you to model and build applications that will automate your business scenarios. This book will provide you with the knowledge that you need to get up and running with developing applications that use Business Processes (BPM) as a foundation.

This book will help you understand the pieces and components inside a Business Process Management System (BPMS). Furthermore, you will learn about the shared mechanisms that the Drools and jBPM projects use to store information and define transaction boundaries.

By the end of the book, you will know how to use the KIE Workbench extension points to communicate external systems with it, and also how to use these extension points to configure the KIE Workbench in a distributed environment.

Authors

Mariano Nicolas De Maio

Mariano Nicolas De Maio is a software engineer who graduated from the Argentinian Enterprise University (UADE). He has been working on Java-based projects and open source frameworks for over a decade. He became involved in the jBPM and Drools projects as a community contributor 4 years ago—first as a project architect for a company investigating the feasibility of a few rules and processes, and eventually as a community contributor on several components that are now part of the open source release components of jBPM, such as the jBPM5 JMS connectors for Human task services, the Infinispan implementations of Drools and the jBPM6 persistence scheme, the Form Builder project and its initial migration to UberFire, the jBPM rollback API, and a number of bug fixes for the core components of several other projects.

For the last 3 years, he has been teaching and consulting for jBPM and Drools. Currently, he is the CTO at Plugtree (http://www.plugtree.com), a company that provides consultancy and training around the world on Drools, jBPM, and any artificial intelligence concept where they can lend a hand to different companies. Since then, he has provided both private and public training on both Drools and jBPM to a large number of companies all over the world.

He lives in Buenos Aires. He is happily married to Tamara and they are raising a beautiful baby daughter, Sofia. In his free time, he likes to work on contributions for the open source projects he is using. He also has a personal blog about jBPM, Drools, and Decision Management (http://marianbuenosayres.wordpress.com). You can find him through the official jBPM IRC channel #jbpm at http://webchat.freenode.net, under the nickname mariano or mariano84.

Besides writing this book, he has previously collaborated in the review of several other books, including jBPM5 Developer Guide, Mauricio Salatino and Esteban Aliverti, Packt Publishing, and A Practical Guide to jBPM5: JBoss Business Process Management Framework, Venkataganesh Thoppae.

Mauricio Salatino

Mauricio Salatino(a.k.a. Salaboy) has been an active part of the Java and open source software community for more than 9 years. He got heavily involved in the JBoss jBPM and Drools projects as a community contributor 6 years ago. After publishing his first book about jBPM for Packt Publishing, he was recognized as a valuable member of both projects at the JBoss Community Awards 2011. He has participated in international conferences such as Java One, Rules Fest, Jazoon, JudCon, JBoss In Bossa, and RuleML as the main speaker. He is now a Drools and jBPM Senior Software Developer at Red Hat/JBoss, fully dedicated to move these projects forward. He is currently in charge of developing the next generation Business Process Management Suite, along with contributing to the evolution of the Drools and jBPM community projects.

He is now based in London. In his free time, he passionately promotes the open source projects he is using, and is very active in the community forums on these projects. He also runs his personal blog (http://salaboy.com) about jBPM, Drools, and artificial intelligence.

Esteban Aliverti

Esteban Aliverti is an independent IT consultant and software developer with more than 8 years of experience in the field. He is a fervent open source promoter and developer with meaningful contributions to JBoss Drools and jBPM5 frameworks. After he got his software engineering degree in Argentina, he started working with local IT companies fulfilling different roles ranging from web developer to software architect. In 2009, while working for Plugtree, he was introduced to JBoss Drools and jBPM5 projects. Over the next 3 years, he became one of the lead consultants at Plugtree, providing services to its most important clients all around the world.

A former Professor of Java and object-oriented programming at Universidad de Mendoza, Argentina, he decided to continue with his passion for education outside the academic field by co-authoring jBPM5 Community Training and Drools 5 Community Training online courses. The urge to transmit his knowledge and experience led him to participate as speaker and co-speaker in several international conferences, such as Java One Brazil, RuleML, October Rule Fest, and various Drools and jBPM summits.

In JUDCon 2012 and 2013, he was recognized as a JBoss Community Leader during the JBoss Community Recognition Awards, in acknowledgement of his contributions to Drools framework.

Currently located in Germany, he works as an independent Drools/JBPM consultant and developer. During his free time, he enjoys contributing to Drools and jBPM projects and helping other people to embrace these technologies. In addition, he has a personal blog (http://ilesteban.wordpress.com), which he uses to publish his work and discoveries in his journey through the open source world.

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